This thread is reserved specifically for the pro-gun argument, claiming that most (if not all) forms of gun control are unconstitutional because the 2nd amendment is intended to protect us from governmental tyranny. I believe it is a hollow argument made by hypocritical people.

This argument almost altogether surfaces from the conservative movement and DC conservatives. The argument goes as follows: if we enact a bunch of gun control measures, the government will have a much easier pathway towards installing tyrannical rule by force.

And yet this same conservative movement has been on the front lines arguing for limits to amendments much more crucial to protecting us from tyranny. Friedersdorf, proving once again that he's one of the best commentators on the internet, cites specifically the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th amendments, all of which have been weakened through various legislation in the 21st century, with conservatives cheering every time.

I think there are various arguments to be made for gun proliferation, and protection from tyranny may be one of them. But coming from a bloc of folks who've supported suspending habeus corpus, attacking privacy, and embracing enhanced interrogation... it's sure as shit a hollow one to make.

In the National Review, Kevin Williamson argues that nearly everyone calling for gun control either doesn't understand or refuses to address the actual purpose of the 2nd Amendment. They talk, he says, as if there's no legitimate reason for an American to have military grade weapons, as if the 2nd Amendment protects mere hunting and home security. "The purpose of having citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to engage in paramilitary actions," Williamson writes. "There is no legitimate exception to the Second Amendment for military-style weapons, because military-style weapons are precisely what the Second Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to secure our ability to oppose enemies foreign and domestic, a guarantee against disorder and tyranny."

Walter E. Williams makes a similar argument in a Townhall column. "There have been people who've ridiculed the protections afforded by the Second Amendment, asking what chance would citizens have against the military might of the U.S. government," he writes. "Military might isn't always the deciding factor. Our 1776 War of Independence was against the mightiest nation on the face of the earth -- Great Britain. In Syria, the rebels are making life uncomfortable for the much-better-equipped Syrian regime. Today's Americans are vastly better-armed than our founders, Warsaw Ghetto Jews and Syrian rebels. There are about 300 million privately held firearms owned by Americans. That's nothing to sneeze at. And notice that the people who support gun control are the very people who want to control and dictate our lives."

What do I think about this relatively commonargument within the conservative movement? For now, I'll refrain from answering. If you're looking for considered objections, read Matt Steinglass in The Economist. In this item, we're going to proceed as if the arguments above are correct -- that there is a real danger of the U.S. government growing tyrannical; that the people must preserve checks on its power; and that the Framers best understood how to do so.

I respect that general reasoning.

What I can't respect are the conservatives who invoke it during political battles over gun control, even as they ignore or actively oppose so many other important attempts to safeguard liberty.

Their inconsistency is incoherent.

Let me explain at greater length what I mean.

Even if we presume that the 2nd Amendment exists partly so that citizens can rise up if the government gets tyrannical, it is undeniable that the Framers built other safeguards into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to prevent things from ever getting so bad as to warrant an insurrection. Federalism was one such safeguard; the separation of powers into three branches was another; and the balance of the Bill of Rights was the last of the major safeguards.

If a "2nd Amendment solution" is ever warranted, it'll mean our system already failed in numerous ways; that "solution" is also easily the most costly and dangerous of the safeguards we have.

It would probably mean another Civil War.

Yet the conservative movement is only reliable when it defends the 2nd Amendment. Otherwise, it is an inconsistent advocate for safeguarding liberty. Conservatives pay occasional lip service to federalism, but are generally hypocrites on the subject, voting for bills like No Child Left Behind, supporting a federally administered War on Drugs, and advocating for federal legislation on marriage. (Texas governor Rick Perry is the quintessential hypocrite on this subject).

And on the Bill of Rights, the conservative movement is far worse. Throughout the War on Terrorism, organizations like the ACLU and the Center of Constitutional Rights have reliably objected to Bush/Cheney/Obama policies, including warrantless spying on innocent Americans, indefinite detention without charges or trial, and the extrajudicial assassination of Americans. The Nation and Mother Jones reliably admit that the executive power claims made by Bush/Yoo/Obama/Koh exceed Madisonian limits and prudence informed by common sense.

Meanwhile, on the right, The Heritage Foundation, National Review, The Weekly Standard, and sundry others are more often than not active cheerleaders for those very same War on Terror policies. Due process? Warrants? Congressional oversight? You must have a pre-9/11 mindset.

It's one thing to argue that gun control legislation is a nonstarter, despite tens of thousands of deaths by gunshot per year, because the safeguards articulated in the Bill of Rights are sacrosanct. I can respect that... but not from people who simultaneously insist that 3,000 dead in a terrorist attack justifies departing from the plain text of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth amendments, and giving the president de-facto power to declare war without Congressional approval.

The conservative movement has a broad, textualist reading of the 2nd Amendment... and nothing else.

I don't understand a subset of the rank-and-file either.

If you're a gun owner who worries that gun control today could make tyranny easier to impose tomorrow, I get that, and if you worry about federal excesses generally, I have no argument with you.

I think law-abiding Americans should always be allowed to own guns.

But if you're a conservative gun owner who worries that gun control today could make tyranny easier to impose tomorrow, and you support warrantless spying, indefinite detention, and secret drone strikes on Americans accused of terrorism, what explains your seeming schizophrenia?

Think of it this way.

If you were a malign leader intent on imposing tyranny, what would you find more useful, banning high-capacity magazines... or a vast archive of the bank records, phone calls, texts and emails of millions of citizens that you could access in secret? Would you, as a malign leader, feel more empowered by a background check requirement on gun purchases... or the ability to legally kill anyone in secret on your say so alone? The powers the Republican Party has given to the presidency since 9/11 would obviously enable far more grave abuses in the hands of a would be tyrant than any gun control legislation with even a miniscule chance of passing Congress. So why are so many liberty-invoking 2nd Amendment absolutists reliable Republican voters, as if the GOP's stance on that issue somehow makes up for its shortcomings? And why do they so seldom speak up about threats to the Bill of Rights that don't involve guns?

In the National Review piece I quoted at the beginning of this article, Kevin Williamson approvingly quotes "the words of Supreme Court justice Joseph Story -- who was, it bears noting, appointed to the Court by the guy who wrote the Constitution." Here's the quoted passage:

Quote:

The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.

Conservatives love to invoke passages like that while defending a broad individual right to bear arms. Do they ever notice that its third sentence says, "It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace"? They love to invoke Madison. They are seldom if ever guided by his warning to the Constitutional Convention:

Quote:

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

The conservative movement may be right or wrong about any number of things, but it doesn't agree with Joseph Story or James Madison when it comes to the best way to safeguard liberty.

It's time to admit as much.

I believe in an individual right to bear arms, and I have no problem with Americans who advocate on behalf of that right. If the feds start rounding up innocents to slaughter I have no problem with an armed citizenry fighting back. But folks who want to guard against a tyrannical government are foolish to focus on the 2nd Amendment while abandoning numerous other rights for fear of terrorism. The right to bear arms is the costliest liberty we have, in terms of innocent lives lost as an unintended byproduct; it is very unlikely to be exercised against the U.S. government in the foreseeable future; and its benefits are less important to securing liberty than habeus corpus and due process, as the experience of other free peoples demonstrates. I understand why people advocate on behalf of the right to bear arms, despite the costs; I don't understand why so many behave as if it is the most important safeguard against tyranny to maintain.

OP is making the mistake of confusing neocons with constitutionalists. Believe it or not, not every 2nd Amendment supporter is in favor of suspended habeas corpus rights, enhanced interrogation, or police-state surveillance measures.

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Disclaimer: my username refers to the SAN DIEGO Chargers only. I will never cheer for the LA Chargers as long as the Spanos family owns the team.

The OP argued that it's hollow to argue that the 2nd amendment is needed to protect the US from tyranny while simultaneously cheering on deeper intrusions into several other amendments.

You ignored that point, and just decided to start arguing that we shouldn't repeal the 2nd.

Because the OP quite hollowly suggested that people are all for the cheering of deeper intrusions of several other amendments while protecting the 2nd. That isn't true, that is a broad generalization. You cannot make a broad generalization of these issues.

Dead wrong. Egypt overthrew a dictator without firing a bullet. A country of 80 million people.

Press, speech, assembly, free exercise, establishment, habeus corpus, the civil rights amendments, cruel and unusual, due process, right to privacy, etc... all of these defang tyranny.

Egypt is not the United States of America. They do not have the same rights, the same policies, the same amendments, the same doctrines as we do. Therefore, what they do, has little to do with us in this justification.

1st amendment, actually.

You're being literal instead of practical. Of all amendments, name me the SOLE amendment that protects all other amendments.

Article 1, Section 8, actually.

Literal again.

While I agree that every nation is its own unique snowflake, that doesn't mean other countries cannot inform our policies. That's crazy talk.

"We don't have the same laws, therefore you can't compare different countries." Just a backwards way of thinking -- the different laws should directly show us the benefits of some countries' policies over others.

Now that right there is crazy talk and backwards thinking. Do you honestly believe for two seconds that if something works in say, Africa, that it will work here? No, hell no.

Are you kidding me?

We have almost those exact same worries today, in some cases they're worse.

We have almost those exact same worries today?

I must have missed the part where people could be hanged in this nation for their religious beliefs, cast away and deported because they do not "fit in" or because they are of another religion or profession.

I must have missed the part where there was an entire nation trying to oppress us and our freedoms, having been born of that nation and those rights.

OP is making the mistake of confusing neocons with constitutionalists. Believe it or not, not every 2nd Amendment supporter is in favor of suspended habeas corpus rights, enhanced interrogation, or police-state surveillance measures.

They will get it so only slingshots and rubberband-paper clips will be considered the arms you will allowed to defend yourself with.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by |Zach|

All kinds of people vote. Not enough of those people think highly enough of Trump to make him President but all kinds of people vote.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

So, if they were polling better than Trump and the primary goal was to prevent Hillary from becoming POTUS, perhaps it would have been a better strategic decision to nominate someone who actually had a chance of beating her and preventing that than nominating Donald Trump.

I am not a conservative and I make the same argument. I also fight for civil rights and protections of the Bill of Rights on a near daily basis in front of the courts. I have 3 cases in front of the 8th Circuit right now. I would demolish the War on Drugs and the War on Terror this instant if I had the power to wish them away. Mothers Against Drunk Driving scares me more than Al Qaeda. I absolutely oppose FISA "courts" and warrantless wiretapping. I strongly oppose the militarization of police (just ask them) and the campaign of drone strikes going on abroad. Indefinite detention of anyone, but particularly American citizens, is per se sickening and reprehensible.

I also wouldn't be so quick to say that it is the conservatives who are eroding the Bill of Rights in the name of safety. The Obama administration has taken all of the Bush policies that violate civil liberties and made them worse or normalized them.

Just last week he signed the NDAA extension which included indefinite detention provisions for American citizens. This week he is signing (has signed?) the FISA extensions.

And it is worth noting that both of those bills came out of the same Senate committee...the one headed by Dianne Feinstein.

And frankly, I would pose to Mr. Friedersdorf that people like him are paving the way to rights limitations. Rhetoric and action on the 2nd Amendment to restrict, normalize restriction on rights generally. We start framing the topics around "Need," and "reasonableness," and "appropriate regulation." It is that framing that killed the 4th amendment. It is that framing that is killing the 5th. It is that framing that is firing shots across the bow of the 2nd.

The main difference between the 4th, 5th, and 2nd Amendments is that the 4th and 5th Amendments are often academic or theoretical to many people. Most people aren't searched routinely by the police. Most people haven't had to go through asset forfeiture proceedings. Lots of people actually own firearms and they have a personal and financial stake in them.

Regardless, I think it is also worth noting (if even anecdotally) that places with tightly regulated firearms also seem to be not giving a shit at all about the fourth and fifth amendments either. New York City, home of Mayor Bloomberg and notoriously stringent gun laws (just ask him), is also home to arguably the most abusive police force in the country. NYPD performed 700,000 "stop-and-frisks" in 2011. They found contraband in 2 percent of those stops. It really is a police state.

Went to Walmart today to buy some .22 shells to rabbit hunt. Guess what? They had virtually no rifle shells of any sort, been back ordered for several weeks, and they weren't sure if and when more shells would come in. Thanks O'Bama. I guess shooting rabbits for food is a terrorist act now

Went to Walmart today to buy some .22 shells to rabbit hunt. Guess what? They had virtually no rifle shells of any sort, been back ordered for several weeks, and they weren't sure if and when more shells would come in. Thanks O'Bama. I guess shooting rabbits for food is a terrorist act now

Because of Obama, I've had 3 or 4 of my ammunition websites shut down, suspend business, or stop selling ammunition all together.